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A Comment On Transgenderism
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Since it came up[ on this board a few times I'll point people to this well written comment on the problems people have with transgenderism:
http://kittyburger.livejournal.com/16127.html ---------------- Epsilon
I must admit, I have high hopes that this will not devolve into a swirling shitpile of tranny-bashing hatred...
But we'll see. Good post, even if I'm missing some of the context. Mind sharing where this has come up on this board? "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
There was a shitstorm in the discussion regarding the fanfic Mahoranma a month or two back. It's come up a few times there and in the Fenspace stuff as well.
The context for the lj post was in response to Olbermann's comments on air about a week back. ---------------- Epsilon
Thank you, Epsilon!
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies  Wiredgeek Wrote:I must admit, I have high hopes that this will not devolve into a swirling shitpile of tranny-bashing hatred...No bashing of trans-gendered people from me. I don't believe in that. A bit of honesty - A very few make me slightly uncomfortable. Less the idea, and more of a practical "oops - this switch just didn't work very well, I can tell from the bone structure and weight distribution and it's way too obvious" kinda thing. Bottom line - If they are convincing as women, I think of them as women. At least at visually and at first glance. I know, I know - it's a superficial thing. And I don't really know enough to make a judgment call. There's the ideal of non-prejudice, and then there's living up to it. Pretty good post, calling the Olberdouche out on that. (Though she's wrong on at least one point. The whole "the racism of the tea party movement" meme. But I think I'll post on that elsewhere as I don't want to derail discussion of the main topic, which is worthwhile.)
The thing with transgenderism is that our available means of addressing it are so very limited.
Right now, we can either treat the hormone imbalance - which many transgendered individuals do not want, because they feel it would be forcing them into a person that they don't want to be, and requires continued medication - never an optimal process. (This is, by the way, the reason why some right-wing mouthpieces refer to it as a 'mental disorder'. They feel this is the correct treatment choice because to them, the other option is worse.) The alternative - gender reassignment surgery - is even more controversial, of course. It rarely provides the desired physical result, still requires hormone medication, and the result is effectively sexually nonfunctional. The prejudice faced by such individuals is extremely painful, and is often used as justification for those who want to mandate alternative treatments - in the name of avoiding that particular prejudice. I do not think that this will be resolved until we are able to provide some surgical means of a complete, fully-functional transformation, a la Dono Vorrutyer (cf Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign). -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode. ECSNorway Wrote:The thing with transgenderism is that our available means of addressing it are so very limited.No. You are wrong. This entire post is wrong. ---------------- Epsilon
... And would you care to say anything about why that is?
-Morgan. If nothing else, I don't see why "Better surgery would help" would be a problem.
Probably not, since the point was to avoid another flamewar.
The situation won't be resolved until we get, if possible, the technology transhumanist fiction calls "resleeving."
Unfortunately, the underlying technologies will result in heel-dragging by self-appointed moral and ethical guardians. I fully expect a shitstorm if the technology ever becomes possible. Because I'm too cynical to believe there will ever be simple, across-the-board human tolerance of those who are different. ''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.'' -- James Nicoll
http://www.theatlantic.co...811/transgender-children
highly recommended. "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies Morganni Wrote:... And would you care to say anything about why that is?Suggesting that current surgical techniques are controversial because they are not magic nanotech reality altering fairy tale bullshit is like saying that chemotherapy is controversial because unlike Leonard McCoy we can't cure cancer with a pill. It's not an ideal solution, but I highly doubt we will ever have an ideal solution. The fact is the surgery is very effective, highly recommended and has a near 100% success rate with making the woman feel better. One of the major problems with transgender relations across the world is the number of road blocks that are thrown up to attempt to prevent access to this kind of highly successful treatment based on the biased agendas of transphobic people. This kind of thing is dealt with in the post I cited above. If you really want to know more about this I suggest asking the original poster, she's quite well informed. Be warned, she can be aserbic if provoked. --------------- Epsilon ECSNorway Wrote:The thing with transgenderism is that our available means of addressing it are so very limited.Transgenderism doesn't have a hormone imbalance to treat any more than phantom limb syndrome does. (That needs qualifying - the hormones are not out of balance relative to the birth sex, though those hormones are probably quite unwanted.) We don't have any good treatment other than transition at the moment. Deliberately editing anything as complicated as gender identity is very far beyond our capabilities at the moment; we're still pretty much at the "crude amputations" stage of mental surgery.
@Glidergun:
the article I linked earlier mentions in passing an interesting new treatment, specifically 'hormone blockers' that allow puberty to be delayed. No relevance to mental surgery, but interesting on the physical front. "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies Wiredgeek Wrote:the article I linked earlier mentions in passing an interesting new treatment, specifically 'hormone blockers' that allow puberty to be delayed.Yeah, but that has drawbacks to. If you're going to have hormone blockers as a prelude to full geneital reconstruction and hrmone treatments when older... why wait eight years? Why not just schedule the surgery as soon as medically safe? In fact, they have already started to do transitional surgery for prepubescents in Germany. ----------------- Epsilon Ayiekie Wrote:Probably not, since the point was to avoid another flamewar. Honestly, I read comments that say little more than "You are wrong." as an *attempt* to start a flamewar. But all is now well. Epsilon Wrote:The fact is the surgery is very effective, highly recommended and has a near 100% success rate with making the woman feel better. What I've read doesn't make me feel too sure of that. Between the increased disease risks of hormone therapies, complications from surgery, and so forth, some feel that the price is too high. (And then there's the matter of female-to-male transition, where the state of the art is... less than impressive.) I'm not familiar with this "resleeving" Foxboy speaks of, but I sometimes wonder if it might take something like "form-change" from Charles Sheffield's Proteus novels to deal with this issue. Not as a treatment option (although it'd be a good one), but because it'd probably be a lot harder for people to sustain their issues with the whole thing if switching sexes was about as difficult and time-consuming as taking an afternoon nap. Of course, there'd probably be a shitstorm for everything else there too. (Although I think that particular story has some good reasons for it not happening... much.) Morgan. Quote:Honestly, I read comments that say little more than "You are wrong." as an *attempt* to start a flamewar. So do I, which is why I've not replied to her. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
"Resleeving" is essentially, like you said, swapping bodies like a set of clothes. It's best described (and where I got the term for the process) in the Catalyst Games RPG: Eclipse Phase:
Quote:We humans have a special way of pulling ourselves upBold emphasis mine. ''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.'' -- James Nicoll Foxboy Wrote:"Resleeving" is essentially, like you said, swapping bodies like a set of clothes. Huh. Well, form-change isn't that. It's more a sort of machine-assisted shapeshifting. -Morgan.
I don't like "Resleeving" because it supposes a mind/body dualism that I do not believe exists.
----------------- Epsilon
I think something more akin to the solution in Bujold's books is more likely to become possible than resleeving or nanotech rebuild. That one essentially grows cloned organs from appropriate genetic material, then surgically implants them.
Of course, they also have genetically-engineered hermaphrodites andd "quaddies" (zero-gee adapted people with extra arms instead of legs).... -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode. |
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